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Tag Archives: Electroacoustic Music

Thanks to all the wonderful musical involved in making these recent recordings and performances possible. These are just rough mixes of each piece as life has not recently afforded me much studio time. Here are Liminar, Quince Contemporary Vocal Ensemble, and the combined super powers of the JACK and Spectral Quartets –

Old Flame Fire Brigade – for String Octet and Live Electronics

Not For Love Nor Money At Least Not Legally – for Mixed Ensemble and Live Electronics

We Have An Exciting New Role For You – for Four Female Voices and Live Electronics

Here is version one of a new piece – Mixed Messages from the Other Side – recorded live by Splinter Reeds at CCRMA last Friday. Reed quintet with live electronics – variable band pass filtered feedback, a little pitch tracking, and a reversed noise gate… this is a strange one…

October 2015 and editing, processing, and posting of some recent materials is not happening quite as fast as I hoped. However, there are very good reasons for this. Life is musically very busy and so far the real world is still better than the virtual world, so I figure it is better to concentrate on the real-world-musically-busy-life while the going is good. For now, here are some extracts and rough edits of bits and pieces from the last few months. They’ll be replaced by better edited video and higher quality audio versions over the coming few weeks.

Soprano – Tony Arnold, Tuba – Max Murray, A Very Large Space – The Entrance Lobby of The Cantor Arts Center (Special thanks to the Staff at the Cantor who very kindly and very supportively turned over their art museum to some colleagues and I for several evenings), a single speaker playing mono fixed media and slightly distorted amplification of the performers. This piece is something of a response to the Deborah Butterfield Untitled (commonly know as one of her Driftwood Horse Statues) in the entrance lobby of the Cantor. Thanks to Tony and Max for their incredible work, which made the night a really great success… the world needs more Soprano and Tuba pieces!!!

One camera angle version of a scene for two musician/actors, piano, percussion, fixed electronics (Utilizing Modal Distortion – currently under development by Professor Jonathan Abel), live electronics, arduino/photosensor controlled fan, and ultrasonic speaker. In a live performance the fan moves the signal from the ultrasonic speaker around the performance space. A three camera version with higher quality audio – in which you can hear the final section of ultrasonic spatialization better – is on the way

Also, here are two parts from a series of pieces I’ve recently made called Are You Dancing? Each piece uses the same set of building materials in various combinations. SuperCollider plays audio files that use Modal Reverb, Pitch Shifting, and Pitch Inversion plug-ins currently under development by Professor Jonathan Abel. In addition, SuperCollider is also used to control band-pass filtered feedback patches, which process live and recorded guitar and bodhrán tracks.

The first piece in the series is for Laptop Orchestra live-coding elements of the SuperCollider code. This will get an airing in December in Iowa. The second piece (performed at CICTeM 2015) is for video and 4-channel audio, here I am posting the video with a stereo mix. This third piece is for fixed and live electronics, electric guitar, and bodhrán in 8-Channels. The live version here uses non-mastered camera audio from CCRMA’s 2015 Transitions concerts.

Are You Dancing? The Second Assemblage (September 2015)

Are You Dancing? 3rd Iteration (September 2015)

Finally, I just received some files from some recently graduated UCSD performance students: Pablo Gómez Cano, guitar; Scott Worthington, double bass; and Dustin Donahue, percussion. They performed and recorded a piece last April that I wrote for them… one more thing to be edited and posted soon… In the meantime check out Scott Worthington’s recent album of Double Bass works:

Thanks to the wonderful Jack Quartet ( http://www.jackquartet.com ) for playing this piece at CCRMA (Stanford) and for all the concerts they gave on their West Coast tour.

This piece is for amplified string quartet (through Supercollider). The gain of the microphones is set extremely high and then limited extremely hard. The frequency of a filter (one for each instrument) is then moved up and down over the course of the piece. This processing produces various pops, rumbles, and occasional soft feedback. The result is then sent through 8 channels creating a strange low-fi texture, which hovers above/around the live sound. Please enjoy this stereo rendering.

This is a stereo rendering of a piece for Ensemble and 8-channel Electronics.

Many thanks to Ensemble Dal Neinte for the performance:

Constance Volk, Flute

Andrew Nogal, Oboe

Ryan Muncy, Alto Sax

Amanda DeBoer Barlett Soprano

J. Austin Wulliman, Violin

Serafim Smigelskiy, Cello

Mark Buchner, Bass

The electronics are both live and fixed. The live element consist of a supercollider patch that generates photosensor controlled sine waves and a”reversed” gate that processes and distorts the voice and ensemble at various shifting time intervals.

This piece is an interactive situation/installation inspired by various elements of The Third Policeman by Flann O’Brien.

Those who encountered the piece follow simple instructions, which explain how the anglepoise lamp should be moved. A microphone with high gain – with pitch shifter and limited output – is hidden near the lamp. The movement of the lamp changes the sound and also changes the lighting cast onto the object/sculptural elements in front of the participant. The central sculptural element is a magnifying lens, which points towards a set of gradually shrinking pieces of bent metal gauze. Still images of these element will be available soon.

This realization was set-up in the old MAX Lab at CCRMA Stanford University. There are three sample encounters in the following video